I coded a Mancala game in Java for a college class this past spring, and I used the Eclipse IDE to write it. One of the great (and fairly simple) visual aids in Eclipse is if you select a particular token, say a declared variable, then the IDE will automatically highlight all other references to that token on your screen. Notepad++, my preferred Notepad replacement, also does this.

Another neat and similar feature in Eclipse was the vertical "error bar" to the right of your code (not sure what to call it). It display little red boxes for all of the syntax errors in your document, yellow boxes for warnings like "variable declared but not used", and if you select a word, boxes appear in the bar for each occurance of the word in the document.

A screenshot of these features in action:

After a half hour of searching, I've determined that Visual Studio cannot do this on its own, so my question is: does anyone know of any add-ins for 2005 or 2008 that can provide either one of the aforementioned features?

Being able to highlight the current line your cursor is on would be nice too. I believe the add-in ReSharper can do this, but I'd prefer to use a free add-in rather than purchase one.

10 Answers
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There is a RockScroll alternative called MetalScroll which is essentially the same thing with a few tweaks and improvements.

Also there is a small and simple WordLight plug-in that only highlights the identical tokens.

Both are open source and support code folding which is nice.

Imho, the bar next to the scroll bar in Eclipse is a lot more elegant solution than the scroll bar replacement of RockScroll/MetalScroll. Unfortunately I couldn't find any VS plug-ins that do it the Eclipse way, so I just stick with WordLight.

I've found that Highlight Selected Word and Productivity Power Tools don't work all that well together so my advice would be to use either one or the other. Also, the background colour of the highlight in Productivity Power Tools is found under Tools->Options->Productivity Power Tools->Enhanced Scroll Bar->Words Matching The Caret Location Color In The Editor. I found that kind of tricky to find, but that might just be me.
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MikaelHalenJan 31 '12 at 11:23

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Thanks to both, Productivity Power Tools works great in VS2010 but the same word highlighting is disabled by default (color is set to transparent), to enable it you have to choose a color by hand like @MikaelHalen writes.
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SemMikeApr 30 '12 at 0:23

This feature seems to be missing from Visual Studio 2010 Express, unfortunately. The Express edition is installed as a single-language setup, thus in a VC++ installation there is no C# entry in Options -> Text Editor where you can select the option "Highlight references to symbol under cursor". :-(
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Christian SeverinMay 9 '12 at 9:30

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@ChristianSeverin I believe you can install the C# Express edition along with the C++ Express edition, though not completely sure.
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romkynsMay 9 '12 at 10:19

The automatic highlight is implemented in Visual Assist as the refactoring command "Find References". It highlights all occurences of a given variable or method, but that's not automatic (binded to a keyboard shortcut on my computer).

DevExpress CodeRush does this when you press TAB when the cursor is in an identifier, you can then tab through all the highlighted instances. There's also a DXCore plugin (the foundation upon which CodeRush/Refactor Pro are built) that does current-line highlighting.

About RockScroll: It doesn't highlight the identifiers. It only highlights the same string in the source code! If there are similar identifier declared : ex. _test and test, and test is highlighted it will highlight the string "test" in variable _test too! And it will also highlight the same string in a method called "sometesting()". So it isn't exactly like eclipse and doesn't work for me.